Oral administration of pharmaceuticals is one of the most widely used methods for providing effective therapy for a variety of illnesses. For example, many powdered medications are administered orally to a person in dosage form such as tablets or capsules, while other medications are administered in liquid form.
Many individuals suffer from chronic health problems that require the regular administration of medicines, supplements, or other like substances. Diseases including, but not limited to, diabetes, allergies, epilepsy, heart problems, AIDS, and cancer all require the regular delivery of precise doses of medicine if patients are to survive over long periods of time. In some cases, some such medicines have a narrow therapeutic range and must be precisely dosed. If the patient falls below the range, the desired effect will not occur, and if the patient is above the range, then, the risk of toxic side effects increases. Additionally, in some cases, treatment plans require multiple medications that need to be taken all at once.
However, many pharmaceutical doses in tablet or capsule form are made in formulations of a predetermined amount of an active ingredient, such as 50 mg, 100 mg, etc. and/or a predetermined set of one or more active ingredients. Accordingly, it is often difficult or virtually impossible to split or divide a tablet or capsule to decrease or customize the dose administered. In fact, splitting or breaking of such tablets or capsules often results in fragments of unequal sizes. Therefore, researchers continue to seek improvements to pharmaceutical manufacturing processes such that variable doses of medicine and other pharmaceuticals can be easily formed.